The White Slave Trade is a little-known aspect of the slave trade in general subordinated as it is to the common notion that only Africans were sold as slaves and only by Europeans. This – of course – is historical nonsense as first the Africans were enslaved by other Africans before they were sold to European traders and secondly the enslavement of Africans by Africans would have happened irrespective of the European slave traders (precisely because there had long been an internal African slave market).

The international White Slave Trade however is potentially older than its African equivalent and we can see references to it as early as the ancient Greeks with Homer’s mention of Phoenician slavers operating around the Aegean in the eternal search for more Europeans to be sold at the ever hungry slave markets of the Middle East.

We know quite a lot about the international slave trade at this early juncture thanks largely to the fact that it was a highly profitable business, but also involved a large amount of capital outlay to acquire the slaves and as such – in modern economic parlance – had high barriers to market entry unless one could find a way of circumventing them. Thus, this international trade in slaves left a long documentary trail some of which has survived to bear witness to this dark chapter in history.

The main target for slavers historically has always been places where there are large numbers of people, but little centralised government. This is so because the business of slavery is an emotional and delicate one in so far as if you enslave the wrong person it is quite plausible to suggest that you will end up getting your throat cut at some point and in addition to that you need to be able to negotiate with smaller governmental units – such as the heads of tribes and clans – who tend to fight each other and take prisoners (i.e. have a ready supply of potential slaves).

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